Faxing without a Fax Machine, Phone Conferencing, Voice Mail

eFax by j2 Global Communications - Take your office on the road! Send and Receive Fax from email, web and cell phone. Your Fax/VM number is unique and can be local or toll-free. Try the services 30 days, Free!

FYI: eFax & eVoice are the two services that I use myself for my toll-free and local fax number and 24/7 voicemail. In addition to that I am using Google Grand Central to supplement. GC offers a nice web interface, which you can see on my contact page.

eVoice Everywhere by j2 Global Communications - Use eVoice as your business answering service. When someone calls your eVoice Plus number, their message is sent straight to your email-listen via computer or phone. Try the services 30 days, Free and pay less than $5 per month after that.

ConnectMeVoice.com A Big Business Phone System for a Small Business Budget. ConnectMessage: voice-mail, inbound faxing and call reports, ConnectAnywhere: single user Follow-me service, Call screening / Call announce and ConnectBiz for small businesses with multiple extensions, PBX functionalities.

RapidFAX Fax from your Email for FREE with a 30-Days Free Trial from RapidFax.com. After that is it only $9.95 per month with 200 Receiving fax pages included and 100 Sending fax pages included. You will be able to send faxes immediately after signup. No time to wait. Signup for free and get going instantly.

Telephone, Voice over IP

WebPhone.com - Make Phone Calls via your PC and Internet for a much lower cost than most "land line" long distance phone companies. calls to over 250 Countries are supported and the cost are usually only a few cents per minute.

Skype.com - It used to be free for Phone calls to the United States, but that changed since January 2007. The Skype Out Service which allows users to do long distance calls from their computer to a land line within the US does now cost money. Either a few cents per minute or you subscribe for the monthly or anual flat-rate. Phone calls from PC to PC are still free of charge.

SMBLive - web-based software that helps small businesses and groups of people share information, manage projects, and improve customer relationships.

BasecampHQ.com - online project collaboration tool, Assign to-dos and tasks, Post messages and gather feedback, Simple scheduling and permissions, Share files internally or with clients, Track people's time. Free account available as well as paid personal to enterprise acccounts. Projects will become available under their own domain like: xxx.projectpath.com or xxx.seework.com or xxx.updatelog.com.

GMail Drive (also called GDrive) is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your (free) Google Gmail account, allowing you to use Gmail as a storage medium.

If you are a Web Developer, you might also want to check out the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) - storage for the Internet service which is part of Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Carbonite online backup software creates a backup of your files on your computer and stores it securely on the remote servers owned by Carbonite, far away from potential harm that could destroy your own local backups (because of fire for example). The service is lightweight and inexpensive. You can get your data backed-up and secured for only about $50 per year.

OffsiteCIO is an online backup solution for small businesses to protect data on their dedicated hosted servers. OffsiteCIO is a service by YourITDashboard.

Business Cards - the Networkers tool of the trade

VistaPrint - 50% OFF Premium "Custom" Business Cards, Free shipping over $50, tons of free samples and every week something new in Free Deals of the Week. Great Customer Service. Downloadable Templates for Graphic Programs to design your own business cards properly. If you are no time or no skill for art, use one of the many templates and online designer tool to get your business card designed and printed.

iPrint - Business Cards, Stamps and personalized Post-Its, which are free with your business card order. Free shipping on orders $75 and more.

I wrote an article in January 2007 for ReveNews.com where I tested and reviewed the business card services of the companies VistaPrint, iPrint and Deluxeforms.com in detail. Check out the article here.

Contact Management Tools and Services

CardScan.com - CardScan is a small desktop device that quickly and accurately reads the printed information from business cards, email or internet contact data into the fields of a powerfully searchable, highly compatible contact database.

I know several people who love this product a lot. I was considering it myself and created an account with them (free). However, the Personal edition of the hardware and software for about $150, which is the price that I might have paid, has restrictions and limits in features that are artifical and only serve the purpose to upgrade you to their Executive edition.

The Executive version of CardScan costs about $100 more than what you have to pay for the Personal one. I still have business cards that I didn't enter manually in my address book, but for me it is not the end of the world.

If your job involves getting as much business cards as possible and to follow up quickly on each and every one of them, CardScan might be a cost that is negligable low for you. However, if you are like me, then it might becomes only another nice, but expensive, gadget where the value for you might not justifies the price tag.

The free CardScan@your Service™ online service (at CardScan.net) without the hardware is nice, but not as good as Plaxo, IMO, at least was this the case, the last time I checked.

Plaxo.com - is an online service to manage your contacts, schedule and tasks. It sync's contacts across various platforms, on your computer (e.g. Outlook or Outlook Express) and online (e.g. Gmail, Hotmail, LinkedIn etc.). It also offers mobile access to your address-book and tools to dedupe duplicate entries. Plaxo also allows the sync and management of calendar entries and tasks.

Unfortunately did Plaxo jump onto the "social media band wagon" and spent too much time on implementing useless social networking features, rather than features that are really important for their core customers and their needs. The feature that I missed the most and mentioned in my review is still missing for example. It's still a great service and I am using them to this day, but there is now a lot of useless clutter that you have to learn to ignore.

Office Stationaries, Stamps, Printer Supplies, Home Office and beyond

Stamps.com - Print official USPS postage, right from your computer. Custom Photo Stamps to put your business Name or Logo on your our mailings. Free Trial is available and also $25-%80 in free Stamps to get started (promotional offer amount changes frequently).

Ink4Art.com offers printer supplies, like ink cartridges and toner for laser printers and low prices. Mostly OEM, but OEM of good quality. Ink4Art offers free ground shipping on all orders over $35 dollars. Ink4Art is already cheaper than your regular big-brand computer/electronics store, but you can save even more, because I also got a 20% off coupon to save on Epson, Canon and all ink jet papers. Use code: INK4ART20, did I mention the Free Shipping?! (Coupon Fine print: Order includes free shipping and 20% off all orders for epson and canon products. Excludes OEM, hp & lexmark product.)

Staples Office Supplies at Staples.com. Find everything you need for your Home Office. Staples offers free delivery on most orders of $50 or more.

Newegg.com has all your computer and electronic needs! Lowest prices, easy to navigate Website, fast shipping and great customer service. I buy most of my computer accessories there myself.

Newegg.com current Deal of the Day (Weekdays only, updated daily):

Everything Office Furniture has as the name already implies everything around furniture for yout home office or corporate office. Get your computer/work desk for your one-man business venture or get complete cubicles, executive office and conference room furniture if your business outgrew your home and real office space needs to be equiped.